Don’t Tell A Soul

I had a great holiday at my family’s marina up in Oxnard. Boats, beers, and bikini- the perfect ingredients for summer fun  

Sometimes I just want put everything in storage, take all of my money, and travel around the world for a year to “find myself”. But then I think, what if I didn’t find myself? What if I came back broke, with no job, no Santa Monica rent-controlled apartment, and no great novel to show for it?

It was a lot quicker to get from 5000 to 6000, than the last thousand miles were. This time, on the 10, just west of downtown. John Lennon is Sunday afternoon music. No longer riding on the merry-go-round, I just had to let it go. Go home and ruin your latest project for the 3rd time, but remember a good artist can always fix their mistakes.

I saw these guys on Donny Deutsch the other night, talking about how to “find your passions” and “live your dreams”, and that sort of bullshit people use to sell books. So how do you live your dreams? I was on the edge of my seat to find out.

First, they had the actor / writer / comedian who left his job as *VP of Time Warner* because he didn’t like the direction his life was headed.  Now, it’s all well and good for someone with VP money to one day decide to fuck it, and focus on writing, but how exactly do regular people do that? He got the idea to quit while he was having lunch with someone about a pilot he’d been working on. Next time I do a pilot, I’ll remember that. 

The other guest living her dreams was once a trader on Wall St. by day, a law student by night, and got by on 4 hours of sleep. So already I know she’s some kind of Type-A nutjob. Now she bakes cookies and sells them in those gift tins you buy for the Secret Santa party at Christmas.

The first step to living your dreams is asking yourself what you enjoy doing, and then identifying a career including those. For example, do you like helping people? I don’t particularly. I like going out to restaurants. I like colorful drinks. I like watching Lost and Torchwood. Going shopping. Driving on the PCH for no reason. Art projects. Pointless blogs. Magazines. Books about royalty. Staring out windows. Listening to music. Taking pictures. So it would seem I am ideally suited for … I don’t know, maybe writing some bullshit book about how other people can improve themselves.

Do you ever feel like moments of your life are like scenes from a movie? It could be as simple as a certain glimpse around a corner, or a snippet of some furtive conversation. I look at the walk down a long hallway, the nonchalant stance in the elevator, the tightly wrapped coat hurrying past the jacaranda trees at night, or the drive through the lonely desert… Moments I’m recording, but unable to string together into a cohesive narrative. All of these scenes, for a story that doesn’t exist. Does that happen to everyone, or is that just me?

I’ve been listening to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory lately, and just marvelling at what an excellent album it is. Even with artists I really like, there’s always at least a couple songs on the album I fast-forward through, but this is one of the few in which every single song is fantastic. Version 2.0 by Garbage is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head.

Killing time while stuck in traffic on the 101 yesterday, I tried to think of what my top 10 favorite songs are. The criteria is that I had to have loved it for at least 5 years, not my favorite song of the week. In no particular order:

• “Tumbling Dice”, The Rolling Stones
• “Night Of The Swallow”, Kate Bush
• “She Makes Me Wanna Die”, Tricky
• “God”, John Lennon
• “Josephine”, Tori Amos
• “To The Kill”, Violent Femmes
• “You Look So Fine”, Garbage
• “The Ledge”, The Replacements
• “Over The Hills And Far Away”, Led Zeppelin
• “The Bewlay Brothers”, David Bowie

Honorable Mentions: “Marys Of The Sea”, “Stray Cat Blues”, “Bent Out Of Shape”, “Free Money”, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, “Oh You Pretty Things”.

Destiny is a fickle bitch.

We should have been at Mohegan Sun, enjoying free drinks, Roulette, and our good seats for Blue Man Group. I should’ve had dinner at my grandparent’s house- the closest thing to my Mom’s cooking I’ll ever have again. At night, the cat we’ve had since I was a teenager would’ve curled up in bed with me, right under the blankets. My Dad would have came by with coffee and Dunkin’ Donuts in the morning.

I should’ve been on a plane tonight, landing at LAX in about 20 minutes. Instead, I came home from work and fell asleep on the couch around 7- shoes on, contacts in, makeup on and all. Woke up just in time to watch Lost, and be up all night.

First day at the office after my “vacation”. It’s always hard to get back into the swing of things after being away. I rather liked not going to work- I made progress on some art projects, started writing on my blog again, did some around-the-house tasks I’d been putting off… basically all the things I never have time to do when I come home at night and pour a glass of Jack Daniels.

I often think about the paths we don’t take in life. In a parallel universe, I’m a stay at home non-mom and I don’t have to wake up at 7. Hell, I could be married and divorced by now, living in some big house I didn’t have to pay for. What a racket!

New Vanity Fair came in the mail. I really don’t see what the big deal is about this photo, why are people so upset? I think it looks beautiful, and reminiscent of an old painting. This is much more tasteful and artistic than, say, Britney’s naughty-schoolgirl video when she was still a teenager. And not half as suggestive as the high-school girls I see at the mall. But I do live in L.A…